Miscellany and Such
I'm just a clown with things to say. You shouldn't believe me.
Intro post for this series
Okay, so that addresses the bulk of my need to splurge. I do want to get into some of the ancillary questions/mysteries though.
- The Timeline
Like most turtles, I have given thought to the question of "the timeline". This question is complicated because there are so many different stages a relationship can go through and they aren't always linear or one-way.
Like, when I think about when GG and DD "got together", do I mean sex? Being exclusive? Romantic commitment? An actual date? Promise of being together for the long-haul? These are all different questions and there's no real set pattern for them.
I guess I'll run through the common theories I've seen and just give an overview of my thoughts.
1. The Consensus Timelines
I feel like this is what I see pop up in fanfic a lot. Basically, DD and GG don't make a long-term commitment till after filming, sometimes way after filming. (Some fanfic opens years down the line with them only getting together in the fic) This often includes casual sex during the filming, but it doesn't have to.
I definitely feel that if DD had his druthers, he and GG would have been married one week into filming. GG's feelings are kinda the deciding factor in pacing for the relationship. Still, it is very difficult to believe that they were not physically intimate during filming.
DD was fucking bold and thirsty, and GG was clearly likewise smitten. I know what guys are like in their 20s. I know this sounds like I'm spouting stereotypes, but genuinely, all of my actual experience tells me that guys who are that outwardly flirty are not the type to faff around before diving into bed.
I doubt it was "just sex" given the romantic undertones of their flirtiness. At the same time, it might have been some feeling each other out and they may not even have decided to be exclusive at the beginning.
Even if they had decided to be exclusive, they were clearly insecure about how the other one felt about them. I think a lot about their (hilarious) English conversation about DD chatting with men and GG chatting with a girl. DD also spent a lot of time reading through GG's messages on his phone, so DD clearly felt some insecurity as to whether GG might be seeing other people.
(It's not really a great thing to anxiously read through your crush/partner/boo's phone messages like that. But DD was hella young, and I know the anxiety and insecurity of love at that age. I think the fact that they quickly built up enough trust to commit to what's essentially a long-distance relationship shows that they both matured past some of that early behavior)
(Also, I can see that if DD was GG's first male partner, DD might have felt especially insecure. Even if he wasn't GG's first, there's often times a special anxiety that non-bisexual gay folk feel when dating bisexual folk. The fear that their partner will leave them for the opposite gender is intense. Just speaking from my experience as a bisexual lady)
It's interesting to me that GG was open to letting DD read his messages. I doubt he'd do that if he were seeing anybody else, so that suggests they'd decided to be exclusive early on. That doesn't necessarily mean they're committed to the long-haul, but it's a serious step given how relationships between actors on set tend to go.
The consensus seems to be that the long-haul decision wasn't made until after GG's Japan trip. That makes sense to me, but I'm not completely attached to it. I don't think we know enough either which way to tell when the commitment happened. There is something romantic about the Japan trip story, and GG's later quote about waiting fits nicely.
I've heard various rumors that GG turned DD down the first time he confessed. This is interesting to me and especially ambiguous. I guess by "confess" we mean "confess to being in love". That confession can come with a desire to commit long-term. This makes me think of DD's Weibo post about things he decided at 21, he hopes to still feel at 81.
In my head, I have a little story that that's a response to GG having turned DD down due to the age gap (and maybe because of the possibility of character bleed muddying feelings). DD is especially sensitive about the age gap being mentioned, and we know he also had complicated feelings about LWJ.
My story continues with another attempt to make them a thing at the end of filming, prompting the Japan trip (and DD's "I miss you" hat). I also think about GG's interview response about having received a confession from someone he liked, and I wonder if he was thinking about DD. About liking DD but also not being sure they could really maintain a relationship outside the relative safety of the film set.
Basically, I have a million stories in my head about how this could have happened, and I'm not incredibly attached to any one of them.
2. DDU Variation
This Timeline isn't mutually exclusive with the consensus. The gist is that DD developed a crush on GG during GG's DDU visit about a year before filming. The rumors attached to this theory posit that DD got GG's WeChat info from DLS but then never did anything with it.
GG and DD have said in interviews that when they tried to connect on WeChat at the start of TU production, they'd found they'd already connected but had never talked to each other.
The evidence for this is heavily linked to a post DDU made in response to GG wishing them a happy birthday where they implied someone in their production was a fan of theirs. This post included a minions emoji, and DD was into minions at the time. Course, a lot of people were into minions, so this could be nothing.
If we take GG and DD at face-value, then there's 2 options:
1. DD had a crush on GG, got his WeChat info, then never did anything with it.
2. DD did not have a crush on GG but got his WeChat info some other way, then never did anything with it.
#1 is frankly hard for me to buy. It is absolutely inconceivable to me that DD would have a crush on someone, have that person's WeChat, and NOT DO ANYTHING WITH IT.
This is DD. He doesn't faff around. When he wants something, he goes for it.
#2 is plausible. I don't know the c-ent industry conventions, but I know in industries I've worked in, social media accounts are traded like business cards to network. Maybe that was commonplace at DDU with their guests, and they just added each other in one of those business card swap networking things.
But what if GG and DD are lying in interviews? They've lied before, after all. This leads to two alternate possibilities:
1a. They didn't have each other's WeChat until they started production on The Untamed.
2a. They did have each other's WeChat and they'd been chatting before The Untamed.
#1a is weird. I can't think of any reason to lie about that. But #2? Plausible. Maybe they did connect and start up a flirtation. Maybe even a relationship. Could be anywhere along the spectrum from early friendship -> light flirtation -> heavy flirtation -> online relationship -> secret in person relationship. Or maybe they just hooked up without a strong relationship attached to it.
It would add a different angle to the fact that they both tried out for The Untamed cast. They weren't necessarily going for the lead roles, as GG tried out for Xue Yang, but maybe they wanted to work on the same production together, and TU was their opportunity to do so.
This does mean they were pretending not to know each other at the script reading and the booting ceremony. This secretiveness implies that whatever relationship they might have had on WeChat already went beyond the bounds of friendship, or else why pretend not to know each other? It shouldn't be a hard thing to explain. "Oh, he guested on DDU last year, and we connected then." That's it. It's not even a suspicious explanation.
But it they'd hooked up or were even just being super flirtatious, then they wouldn't want to divulge that to those around them. (Counterpoint: They were pretty open about the relationship they did have eventually on set, even thing so far as to flirt, fight, argue, and have lewd conversations while getting their makeup touched up)
I can buy the DDU variation. The evidence is thin, and trying to "read" their behavior in the bts is always a little ambiguous and limited. But I'd say, if DD did get GG's WeChat because he had a crush, then it's highly likely they already had some relationship before filming. If DD just acquired GG's number in some routine industry business card swap, then this timeline variation is unlikely.
C. THE DEVIL'S TIMELINE
I love the name of this one. Basically, the speculation is that DD and GG might have been together even before the DDU episode. I think I've seen some Uniq fanmeet highlighted as a potential meeting point, given that GG was into K-pop at that time.
The evidence is even thinner for this than for the DDU variation. There's a picture DD drew of a person with a mole like GG's (I have no clue the context of his drawing that picture) and they have some Weibo posts that are kinda similar.
The Weibo post evidence is always confusing for me. I can see couples having some back and forth in their posts. Like, if your partner starts posting photos of ridiculous desserts, you might post similar photos. Or your crush develops an interest in foosball, so you do too. But some of the evidence is apparently photo sets that bear some resemblance to each other and I just...is this like a known thing for couples do to this? I've never come across this outside of this fandom. I don't know why you would. If my wife started subtly mirroring my photo posts, I don't think I'd even notice. (Hell, maybe she already does)
So I guess I don't find those incredibly convincing. After a point, if you look at any two people's posts long enough, you'll probably be able to find some similarities if you keep the criteria broad enough. If this is a known thing in Chinese social media for couples to do this, though, I might find that more compelling.
Other than that, the main evidence is kinda subjective in that its based on their behavior towards each other. This is real hard for me to gauge, so I'm not placing bets on it.
I don't think the Devil's Timeline is impossible. But I just don't see anything to indicate it as a thing. But who knows?
In sum, overall, I think DD and GG were physically (and romantically) intimate pretty early on in filming, earlier than many in the consensus seem to think. I'm undecided on when the big, serious commitment happened. And I'm open to the idea that they had a flirtation or an early online relationship via WeChat after that DDU episode. I'm not sold on the Devil's Timeline though.
Do I want to know? I mean, yeah? I find their whole romance interesting and compelling. It's like a romance novel, and I like romance novels. If they were non-famous and I met them at a party, I'd be totally into asking the "So how did you two meet?" question and learning that story.
But I'm just a rando in a different country who doesn't even speak their language. I don't get to know everything I want to know, much to my consternation. So I just have to shrug and move on with life (and read fanfic).
If in the unlikely event they come out with their story, though, I'd buy the shit out of that book.
- Fanfic/Shipping
I read a lot of fanfic (and have done for most of my life), but I felt some discomfort with the first bjyx fic I started reading. Not cause of the fic, itself, but because it felt weird to read fiction about real people. It's a side of fandom I'd never gotten into.
Fiction is a way to take stuff from the real world and make sense of it. This is something I've always appreciated about reading and books. Fanfic and bjyx fanfic fills the same need. I know I'll never get the full story on the truth behind bjyx but I can share ideas with others. I can engage in what-ifs and work through moments that are emotional.
I think sometimes people take a single fanfic to mean that the writer is making a Statement of how they think things are. With real people, they think the writer is seriously ascribing actions/thoughts/whatever to the celebrity.
Writers really aren't doing this, usually. Most writers have multiple fics with different situations, premises, character dynamics, universes. Writers are playing around with ideas, with dynamics they enjoy. Sometimes, they may feel they're hitting close to reality, but they know there's no way to be sure. Sometimes, they just want to write something with a silly premise to make their friends laugh.
Fanfic can be beautiful and compelling and amazing, but it's not real. It's words on a screen, and every fanfic reader moves on to the next fic with a completely different premise afterwards. It's not useful to read so much into any particular fic.
Can some fics and fans cross a line? Sure. But they're rare. And I honestly think people who write fic are less likely to be the crazy stalker fans just cause, well, they're spending their time writing, not stalking their celeb.
I do find the division of fandom into top/bottom weird and offensive. I don't have a preference on the mechanics of sex bc...whatever. But since fic writers tend to base their characterization on those mechanics, sometimes I'll be in the mood for one dynamic vs another. It's not about the sex though. There's just lots of aspects of Yizhan that I like, and I like to read a lot of different takes on them.
Again, it's fiction. Just like everything turtles believe.
- Fanservice
During my development as a turtle, I had a moment where I read a rumor that DD had played up the fanservice intentionally. It threw me back because I'd gotten pretty fond of DD and that sort of behavior was not in line with how I saw him.
I mean, I know actors are actors. They act. Part of that acting involves promos for their roles. But I've always appreciated DDs no-nonsense straightforwardness, so thinking of him playing a role in the bts was hard to stomach.
So I thought about it and did some reading around, as I do, and finally concluded that this whole "fanservice" thing wasn't very believable.
1) Fanservice doesn't look like the bts.
Honestly, there was a point while watching the bts when I felt DD was just kinda bullying GG and GG was putting up with him (I think this is a common takeaway). Even when I cottoned onto the fact that GG was just as flirtatious, I recognize that DD was just as obnoxious as shit.
He wasn't doing the actual romantic fanservice stuff that you see, say, Thai BL actors do. He was acting like a young boy with a crush. And I say this as someone who was a young girl DD's age once who had a similar (unreciprocated, in my case) crush on a coworker and who was as obnoxious as DD was. None of it resembled normal, stereotypical romance, because especially at that age, that's not how you do romance. No offense to DD. I know he hates to be recognized as young, but he was quite young and often acted like it in his clear affection for GG.
2) The experts say so.
By "the experts" I mean BL fans. I lurked around some BL spaces to see what that crowd's impression was. The overall consensus was that ggdd had great chemistry but never actually did fanservice.
True, being a Chinese show, maybe Chinese fanservice is just especially toned down. But that takes us to the next few points.
3) My understand of the release of the bts is that a lot of the bts is "unofficial" and was not planned to be released ahead of time. It was only with the popularity of the series that more came out.
Why fabricate a backstage, weirdly chaotic but low-physical affection relationship on a show that you're not even sure will get aired?
4) Fanservice ends.
Especially for a BL pairing, once the promo is over, the actors have to be separated from teh gay to make room for future het pairings. But there is every indication that GG and DD were still together after this point, and they're still dropping candies to this day.
So in sum, I know gg and dd are gay. The odds are much more likely that they are in a relationship than that they're doing long-term fanservice. They are gay. They fell in love. They're together. That's not so hard to buy.
Also, I went ahead and explained my turtledom to my wife. She easily bought that the two were together during filming. She wasn't sure about them still being together, so I explained about the necklaces. She asked me, "Could it just be fanservice even now?"
I started trying to explain my reasons I listed above and then I also mentioned they were signed with different agencies. As soon as she heard that, she said, "Ah, yeah, that wouldn't make any sense then."
Not saying that my wife knows everything, but she's really smart, y'all.
She is also a clown, though, like me. Absolutely raving mad.
One more post in this series! Some closing thoughts, and I'm also working on a little prezzie for turtles before I retreat to lurking.
43 notes
·
View notes
Holiday period at the fast food reader's workplace. Do they have costumes for Halloween? Do anything special for thanksgiving? What about Christmas, do they do something like a secret Santa? Do they all celebrate Reader's birthday/anniversary of them being hired?
I'm fine if you focus on one or do any of them/something unrelated that I haven't thought of. I just want more fast food reader and the gang of nightmares that adore them 😭
(Going with Birthday because I thought of the funniest thing, but maybe Christmas Special in the future?)
Twenty minutes left on the clock.
You shoved your coat and bag beneath the counter before the start of your shift to make for an easy get away. You'd recently invested in a lanyard you keep hidden down your shirt to keep your keys secure and on you at all times. The line was moving quickly thanks to the new hire that had yet to witness the horrors of the establishment. You could probably even get away with leaving without clocking out if you sucked up to your boss enough tomorrow. There would still be consequences, but as long as you could make it through today everything would be fine. Just twenty more minutes...
"Hey..."
A gentle tap on your shoulder draws your ailing mind from the depths of dread this cursed day traps you in. The janitor stands behind you, hands tucked into their pockets. You eye the slight bulge of a square item in their left, but decide its none of your business as you raise a hand in greeting. "Hey. What's up?"
"Not much..." They rock on their heels, more fidgety than usual as their hands shift in their apron pockets. "Hope I'm not bothering you, but I was cleaning up the break room and noticed there was a mark on the calendar with your name on it... It's your birthday today, right?"
Oh no.
No. No. No.
You open your mouth to make up some ahitty excuse, but your tongue remains glued to the floor of your mouth. Your eyes dart towards the boarded doors of the party room as they speak.
"If I had known sooner, I would've gotten you something better, but this was all I could pick up during my break. Honestly, birthdays are a new concept to me, but a lot of things are. You've... helped me learn a lot about myself so I just wanted to say-"
The Janitor pulls their hand from their apron - presenting a yellow box with a bright red bow.
"Happy birthday."
A loud bang shakes the doors of the party room, rocking tower of unused tables and chairs used to keep them closed. You knew they wouldn't be enough to keep what's inside in - a distraction to keep it at bay hopefully giving you enough time to flee. You quickly grab your things and vault over the counter, shoving past customers still waiting patiently in line as another bang knocks down the top layer of defense. Bang. Bang. Bang. Your heart leaps in your chest with every crash of furniture hitting the ground. You force yourself to look ahead as the doors fly open - stale air raising the hairs on your skin. The squeaks of its shoes send chills down your spine - raspy voice crawls in your ears like maggots to a fresh carcass.
"Did I hear it was a certain someone's.. Birthday?..
Against the voices in your head screaming at you to do otherwise, you glance over your shoulders. There are still smudges in its makeup from your last encounter with it dating exactly one year back to this day. You shutter as its twin tongues, still tied in that braid it tried shoved your esophagus snakes over its painted lips.
"No?"
Its smile grows. "You don't have to lie... I have the date written right here... And here...."
The clown points its gangly fingers at its forehead and chest respectively.
"I think you might have my birthday confused with that guy over there."
You pick up your feet as the clown snaps its head in the direction your finger aims. Seeing a blank wall, and hearing your shoes slap against te, it gives chance - crouching on all fours and bounding after you. Its cold hands latch around your ankle, yanking you off balance and towards the party room doors. You scratching at the floor doors, clawing faster as you feel its eyes on you from over its shoulder.
"No! My birthday was last year - I swear!"
"Silly, silly. You have one every year, and it should be celebrated every. Single. Day.... I've got cake!"
482 notes
·
View notes